


if you've changed your mind

by warmfoothills



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Reconciliation, Weddings, i will just write increasingly more romantic things until i die i think, the romance of the kitchen sink, winter on a mediterranean island
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:13:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28569801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmfoothills/pseuds/warmfoothills
Summary: The first Draco knows of the whole thing is Harry Potter standing in his broom shed.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Scorpius Malfoy/Original Character(s)
Comments: 99
Kudos: 437





	if you've changed your mind

**Author's Note:**

> wanted to get this out before the end of the year but, y’know, as usual, my brain does not do well with deadlines, however self-imposed. anyway, it’s a mamma mia au only in that i borrowed like a tiny bit of the very basic premise but if you want to picture draco in the meryl streep dungarees for the entirety of the fic.. i will in no way stop you..... also, to clarify: i mostly avoid tcc/next gen content so if scorpius is ooc, i apologise. he’s literally just being used as a plot device, which is why his spouse-to-be is a complete and utter non-character in this lol. sorry! it’s not really about the wedding. feel free to imagine whoever you want in there, i kept it pretty neutral so you can extrapolate to your heart’s content xxxxx

The first Draco knows of the whole thing is Harry Potter standing in his broom shed.

It’s been two decades and Potter looks like someone took the scrawny teenager Draco had an ill-advised, heady fling with in the summer of ‘99 and put him in a cellar under optimal conditions just to spite Draco, which is to say that Potter has aged like a fine wine designed specifically around Draco’s very choosy palette, and this is absolutely not what Draco needs to be happening on a Thursday morning two days before his son’s wedding.

“What the fuck are you doing in my broom shed?” are the first words Draco says to Potter in twenty-two years.

“Er,” Potter says, grinning, sheepish. “Unpacking, apparently?”

Draco’s eyes fall to the bag at his side. “Why?”

“Why am I unpacking, or why—”

“ _Why,_ ” Draco says, cutting him off, “are you in my shed? Why are you on my island?” 

Potter’s eyebrows go up. “ _Your_ island.”

“Yes. My island.”

“You invited me?” All of Potter’s sentences sound like questions, unsure, even in his new, low ( _deeply_ sexy, what the hell is that about) middle-aged voice. “I didn’t— I mean, I wasn’t expecting the owl obviously, but I thought, y’know, you asked, I came, why not, and then your son— well, I’m assuming your son, he’s the spit of you, Jesus, it was— thought I’d gone back in time for a second— anyway, he was on the pier when I arrived and he..” Potter trails off, squinting a little at Draco’s face. Draco’s sure whatever expression he finds there cannot be particularly accommodating, because “..put me in here,” he finishes, somewhat lamely, with an increasingly tentative smile.

Draco blinks at him. “You never were a good liar, Potter.”

“What? I’m not—”

“Why,” Draco cuts him off, again, “would I invite you, whom I haven’t so much as thought of in twenty years—” (a lie both huge and disappointingly unconvincing, if Potter’s skeptical eyebrows are anything to go by) “—to my son’s wedding? My son whom you have never met? And _why,_ ” he adds quickly when Potter looks like he’s going to interject, the word starting to sound strange to his own ears from overuse, “say, for hypothesis’ sake, I _had_ invited you, would I house you in my shed?”

“It’s quite a big shed,” Potter says, not inaccurately. Draco’s collected a large number of brooms over the years, so what.

“There’s no bed.”

Potter fixes him with a thawing look that Draco entirely does not care for. “We never used to—” he starts to say and Draco has to interrupt him for a third time, not even able to muster words this time, just needing to make some kind of _noise_ to stop Potter from saying exactly what they used to do. Like Draco needs the reminder.

“I’m going to talk to my son,” Draco says, drawing himself up straighter to detract from that brief moment of incoherence. Potter’s still an inch or two shorter than him, which— small mercies. “You can— stay here? For now. Whatever. I honestly do not care.”

Potter reaches for his bags again which makes Draco want to smack the back of his skull. “Don’t _unpack._ ”

“But you just said—”

_Merlin,_ this is not happening, Draco’s eighteen again, frustrated and dramatic and, underneath it, maybe, a little, a very, _tiny,_ insignificant amount, having _fun._ Which is pathetic. It has quite literally been _three minutes._

“There’s no need to start making yourself at home,” he tells Potter. “Wait here.”

///

Scorpius has unfortunately perfected the art (Merlin knows where from — Draco was never this adept at hiding from his parents when he was young, and he had the whole Manor to play with) of disappearing on an island with a land mass less than five square miles total, of which Draco owns and knows every inch, and only ever seems to apply this particular skill for concealment when he knows he’s in trouble. He’s been doing it since he was eight, and Draco’s none the wiser.

“ _Potter's_ here?” Pansy says, when Draco pokes his head into the kitchen to check it for his son.

Draco refuses to look at her, scanning the room. “In the shed.”

“The _shed._ ”

“Yes, the shed, Pansy. Are you going to repeat everything I say, or do you have any useful ideas where my son might be hiding?”

Pansy laughs at him, tugging her thick, fleeced morning robe tighter around her shoulders. She usually only visits in the warmer months and still hasn’t quite forgiven her godson for deciding to get married during the worst cold snap the Riviera has seen in years.

“He used to go to this hidden cove near the promontory,” Pansy tells him. “When he was a teenager.”

Draco straightens up out of his lean around the door frame with narrowed eyes, suspicious as to how long Pansy’s known about this hideout and why she’s never told him before. “Right. Thank you.”

“The _shed,_ ” Pansy repeats, charmed, and Draco leaves her to her breakfast with an eye-roll.

He apparates over to the south-west side of the island where the land thins out to sea in a small peninsula and starts along the headland there, towards the non-functional lighthouse that sits at the end. He knows the shape of this coastline like the back of his hand, has walked this path a thousand times over the years, and he sees no new coves, secret or otherwise, that could be hiding his son, but the air out here is sharp and clear and gives him a lucid moment to think, if nothing else.

Assuming Potter is telling the truth about the invitation, and isn’t simply here as part of some insane joke to test Draco’s patience — which Draco isn’t ruling out, not yet — there has to have been a mistake. The only other person who even knows what happened between the two of them that summer is Pansy, and Draco never gave her details.

Unless _Potter_ told other people, but Draco had assumed he wanted to keep it a secret once he returned to England to become the Ministry’s poster boy. Three months on a Mediterranean island with an ex-Death Eater was hardly one for the resumé.

Which begs the other, even more startling question: why exactly Potter said _yes_. Were the situation reversed, Draco’s sure he wouldn’t have thought twice about throwing correspondence from any child of Potter’s straight into the fire. Draco _didn’t_ owl him, has no idea how the invitation found its way to him, but if he, in a moment of madness, _had,_ he would never in a million lifetimes have expected Potter to actually show up.

It makes no sense and could not have befallen Draco at a less convenient time, neck-deep in wedding prep as he is, and with all the work still to be done to ready the island for more visitors than it’s seen the entire time Draco’s called it home. In an attempt to avoid going full, crazed father-of-the-groom-zilla, he’d deigned to let Scorpius handle some of the planning duties, but apparently trusting him with the RSVPs was a step too far.

The landscape remains disappointingly void of life on the walk back up the peninsula and Draco apparates back to the main house, annoyed.

He finds Pansy in the kitchen again, now with an unrepentant Scorpius sitting at her left, and, across from the pair of them, Potter, who’s drinking tea and laughing at something Pansy suspiciously stops talking about as soon as Draco appears.

Draco makes an unattractive spluttering noise on the threshold and they turn to look at him.

“Pansy!” Draco snaps. He has respective reason to shout at all three of them, but she’s the easiest to start with — though also, unsatisfyingly, the least likely bothered by his yelling.

“What? I found him,” she says unnecessarily, smirking, tilting her head at Scorpius. “You’re welcome.”

Draco sighs. “Was there even a hidden cove?”

“No," Pansy snorts. "He was upstairs the whole time.”

Merlin. Draco forgets sometimes that this is the woman who gave Scorpius elf-wine aged _thirteen_ and then refused to help Draco clean up the inevitable and immediate vomiting.

“And I see _you_ have invited yourself in,” he says to Potter.

Potter doesn’t look phased by his tone, either. He just shrugs. “Actually, Parkinson came and got me—”

Draco makes an incensed noise. His eyes fall on his son, his last resort as the one person who’s supposed to respect his authority. He raises unimpressed eyebrows at Scorpius, but Scorpius only quirks an eyebrow right back. So much for respect. Draco should never have taught him how to do that.

“Scorpius,” he says.

“Dad,” Scorpius says right back, brazen. Potter makes an amused noise into his mug.

Draco bristles. “A _word._ ”

Scorpius follows him out, at least, through the corridor into the sitting room, where Draco shuts the door and turns to him. He has the sense to look a little worried at Draco’s scowl now that they’re alone.

“Care to explain,” Draco starts, “my only son, my one heir, light of my life—

“ _Dad,_ ” Scorpius cuts in again, “don’t start,” well aware that Draco only leans into the excessive, guilt-trip flattery when he’s really annoyed.

“Why is he here?” Draco asks, straight to the point.

Scorpius pulls a face. “Yeah, about that. It’s sort of funny?” At Draco’s supremely unamused look, he hurries on. “I didn’t— er. Mean to?”

“ _Mean_ to? How on earth do you accidentally invite _Harry Potter_ to your wedding?”

“Ok, don’t— don’t get all angry and weird,” Scorpius says, pointing a finger at Draco and then immediately switching to the universal hands-up gesture of surrender when he sees that being _pointed_ at is doing nothing for Draco’s stress levels, “but I found your diary.”

“My diary,” Draco says, nonplussed. He hasn’t kept a diary in years, not since he was— “Oh. _Oh,_ you did _not._ ”

Scorpius winces. “Yeah, um. Sorry? I was looking for your old advanced Arithmancy notes, you said I could borrow them and— honestly? It’s not my fault it was just _there_ , with all your school books, how was I supposed to know—”

“You were _not,_ ” Draco cuts in, stomach sinking. The rest of his body follows the sensation, falls into the armchair behind him. “You were not supposed to know.”

_No one_ was supposed to know. Draco had been stupid to even write any of it down, but he’d needed the outlet, back then. 

“Well, there wasn’t a lock or anything!” Scorpius says, exasperated.

Draco closes his eyes and reminds himself that hexing his son is a very, very bad thing to do, even at this age, when he’s perfectly capable of defending himself.

After a moment of dogged patience-collection, he opens them. Scorpius is eyeing him warily from his position by the mantle.

“What, precisely, does that have to do with Potter being here?” Draco asks evenly, afraid he already knows the answer.

Scorpius shifts uncomfortably and scratches at the back of his neck in a nervous gesture he inherited from his mother. “I s’pose I thought— I don’t know. There was a lot of _stuff_ in there, dad. I thought maybe you hadn’t told me everything. About mum.”

Of course. Because Draco, paranoid, hadn’t ever used Potter’s name. It’s reasonable that Scorpius read those entries — God, Draco can’t even remember what he’d said, only that it was likely _mortifyingly_ melodramatic — and assumed this person Draco spent pages and pages writing about was his real parent.

Which _hurts,_ however understandable. The idea that Scorpius thinks he would ever keep something like that from him.

“I have never lied to you,” Draco says, making sure his son holds his gaze, sees the sincerity there. “Not about that.”

“Yeah, well,” Scorpius says with a less-than-happy laugh. “I know that _now._ It was stupid of me to— but, whatever. Wishful thinking, I guess.”

And Draco understands _that_ , too, knows what it’s like to be so confused at the cold disdain of your own parent that you jump at any chance to believe that it’s not real, that this person didn’t bring you into the world only to abandon and dismiss you. Draco’s tried to be the best father he could manage from the very beginning, but it doesn’t change the fact that Scorpius hasn’t seen his mother in years, just like Narcissa’s fierce protectiveness never changed the fact that Draco’s own father was an unfeeling bastard.

Draco feels himself soften slightly. “So you, what? Wrote to Potter because you thought he might be your real dad?” It’s a ludicrous thought. He really hopes Potter can’t hear this conversation from the kitchen.

“Yeah, but I didn’t know it was Harry fucking Potter when I sent the owl,” Scorpius says, a little bemused, a little defensive. “You just called him H, and you used neutral pronouns. It could’ve been anyone.”

“Language,” Draco chides — which makes him a hypocrite, but if he’s learned anything about parenting after twenty years, it’s that being able to tell your child not to do all of the things _you_ do, without guilt, is one of the best parts. “You really had no idea it was him?”

“No,” Scorpius promises, and Draco knows he’s not lying, can read it on his face because he’s learned all of his tells.

Draco sighs heavily and rubs at his temples. “Well, obviously he’s not your father.”

Scorpius huffs. “Don’t be so small-minded, dad, two wizards can—”

“Yes, thank you, Scorpius,” Draco cuts him off, steely. “I’m perfectly aware of what two wizards can do. I just thought, considering how I’ve always been completely transparent with you about how your _mother left_ —”

“Well, like I said, I didn’t know it was him, did I?! I just wrote to the address in the back of your diary!”

At a later point Draco is going to revisit the fact that his son read the private, dramatic ramblings of his teenage self, preferably when the catastrophic consequence of said snooping is less urgent.

“Still,” Draco says. He can’t blame Scorpius for indulging in the delusion of a secret, lost parent, one who perhaps wasn’t aware of his existence at all, and would come running at the prospect of a reunion. His son has always been a romantic at heart. It’s why he’s getting married at twenty-one instead of doing the sensible thing and waiting, as Draco’s tried fruitlessly to convince him to. “You could have just talked to me about it.”

Scorpius squirms under his look, a movement that means he knows Draco’s right and doesn’t want to admit it. He has all of Draco’s _and_ Astoria’s stubbornness combined.

“He _came,_ though,” he says, triumphant, a transparent attempt to move the conversation away from himself. “That means something.”

“All it means,” Draco says, “is that Potter is as irritatingly decent as he was twenty years ago. You don’t know him, Scorpius. This is what he does.” He looks away, out of the window onto the paved courtyard at the back of the house. There’s a crack in one of the slabs that he’s been meaning to fix for weeks. “I assume you addressed the invitation as though it came from me?”

Scorpius nods. “I thought whoever it was’d be more likely to respond if it seemed like you’d sent it. And I was right.”

Draco shoots him a warning look, but he only grins.

“If it wasn’t your wedding in two days..” Draco starts.

“I know, I know,” Scorpius laughs. He’s much looser than Draco ever was, feels things just as deeply but is able to swing between emotions, shake off the less pleasant ones with an ease Draco never mastered. “You’d be punishing me to mainland France and back right about now.”

“Quite right,” Draco says, unable to curb his own small smile. “And you’d deserve it. I still might.”

“Whatever,” Scorpius says, still so _young_ — he hasn’t lost that bored exasperation of youth yet — and Draco loves him too much to ever stay angry at him for long.

He moves to leave with a cursory questioning glance for permission and Draco waves him off, stays and sits awhile in the armchair, wondering what the fuck he’s supposed to do now. Whatever circumstances brought Potter here don’t change the fact that he _is_ — here, back in the place where they’d spent three sun-drenched months together, a time Draco has never forgotten despite multiple attempts to the contrary.

It might be rude to ask him to leave considering he was actually invited, however erroneously. Then again, if Draco explains the situation, he might _want_ to leave. Draco’s sure he only came out of some lingering feeling of duty, because he thought it the polite thing to do, rather than out of any desire to see this place — or Draco — again. Once Draco tells him it was a mistake, he’ll probably be relieved to get back to whatever plans he usually has for the holidays.

Draco has no idea why the thought of watching Potter leave ( _again,_ his traitorous brain reminds him) makes him vaguely nauseous.

There’s no use hiding in here, anyhow, so he gets up and goes back through to the kitchen. Scorpius has disappeared once more, hopefully to make himself useful and complete one of the many tasks on the to-do list Draco stuck to the front of the fridge so that no one could ignore it, and Potter and Pansy are sitting in relatively comfortable silence. Pansy’s preoccupied reading the supplements in the morning’s Prophet, anyway, and Potter doesn’t look like he’s been insulted in the past five minutes, so. All good signs.

Draco pulls out a chair at the head of the table and sinks into it. Pansy doesn’t look up from her magazine but Potter meets his eyes with a patient little head tilt, and Draco finds himself at a loss for what exactly to say.

Potter breaks the silence for him. “I’m assuming you _didn’t_ invite me, then?” he asks.

Draco exhales heavily through his nose. “Not exactly, no.”

“Right.” Potter blinks. “Your son—?”

Draco only nods.

“Ah.” There’s a beat of silence. “Can I ask why?”

Draco grimaces. He can’t really explain the mix-up without confessing to Potter about the damn journal entries, and the idea of telling Potter, both of them now the other side of forty, that he’d once written in his _diary_ about him, gushingly enough to convince his son that Potter was his true, secret parent, is so far down the list of things Draco wants to do right now that he would actually maybe rather jab the butter knife in his eye socket and have to wear a patch for the wedding, like some kind of pirate.

“You can ask,” Draco says, diplomatic, playing for time, and Pansy unsuccessfully tries to stifle a snort.

Draco’s eyes snap to her. “Pansy. Isn’t it time you were dressed? The appointment’s at eleven sharp and you can hardly go and meet the florist in your dressing gown.”

Pansy raises her eyebrows, clearly entertained. “I could,” she says. “She’d probably give you an even bigger discount,” but she gets up and leaves them to it with a beatific smile, so Draco can’t very well complain.

“Look,” Draco says to Potter once she’s gone. “It’s— I’m not going to explain it all, but Scorpius found your address amongst my old papers. He’s the one who sent the invitation.”

“I gathered,” Potter says evenly. “But why would he invite me? Does he even know who I am?”

“Of course he knows who you are,” Draco scoffs. “I haven’t raised him under a rock.”

Potter grins down at his near-empty mug. “No, I mean,” he says, flushing a little. Draco only sees it on his skin because it’s so bright in here, the winter morning light streaming in through the windows. “Does he—” He clears his throat. “ _Know who I am_. In regards to you.”

Draco— really has no idea what that means. There is no Potter _in regards to him_ anymore.

At his stricken silence Potter looks up, eyes wide in question. “Does he know we—?”

“No,” Draco cuts him off hastily. “Yes? I mean, not everything. He thought,” but he has to stop, can’t make himself actually say it out loud.

Potter just stares at him, waiting. There’s an air of complete non-judgement about him but Draco still wants to hide under the table like a child.

“There’s a chance he thought you were his real parent,” Draco says in a rush, like if he gets it out fast enough it won’t sound so bad. It takes Potter a moment to absorb, find the spaces between the words enough to make sense of them, but when he does his eyebrows go right up into his hair. (Still so _thick,_ and curling everywhere, Draco notes, with a twinge of self-consciousness over his own hairline.)

“Wow,” he breathes, coughs a half-laugh. “Um.”

“I know,” Draco sighs. “Bit of a, uh. Misunderstanding.”

“Right,” Potter says again. He doesn’t sound angry. Just— amused, mostly. Draco eyes him carefully, watches the side of his face as he contemplates this information.

“His mother’s still a sore spot,” Draco adds, like that explains anything.

“She’s not around?” Potter asks.

“No.” Draco has gotten very good at keeping the bitterness out of his tone after all this time. Not that he has any lingering resentment towards Astoria, as such — neither of them had wanted to get married, and he can’t bring himself to blame her for living her own life — but on behalf of his son, the person he cares about most in the world, he sort of hates her. For not sticking around, for him at least. For answering his owls a month late, if ever; for never being more than a name at the end of a letter to him.

For being such a non-parent that a random, mystery person from a twenty-year-old diary seemed a better prospect.

“So he— found out about that summer,” Potter muses, addressing his own hands. _Do not make me tell you how,_ Draco pleads silently, but Potter blessedly goes on without asking. “And, without knowing it was me, he thought I might be involved in his life somehow, because his mum’s not around, and he’s probably feeling weird because he’s getting married and she’s— not coming?” He directs the last at Draco, clarifying, and Draco nods tightly.

Potter lets out a small sigh. “Yeah. So. He’s already in a heightened emotional state because of the wedding and he latched onto a possibility rather than face the reality that she won’t show. Makes sense.”

Draco wants to laugh, would probably be offended at the presumption of Potter essentially psycho-analysing his son in front of him, if he didn’t know that Potter’s always been one to think aloud. He processes things verbally, something Draco remembers from that summer, and before, too, always hearing him muttering to himself in classes at school.

And he’s not wrong, either, which makes Draco wonder if he does actually have children himself. He talks as though he knows what it’s like to parent, but Draco has no idea if that’s from personal experience or if he’s just gained some emotional perception over the years. There’s no doubt he’s been around _some_ children; one does not get adopted into the breeding ground that is the Weasley family without gaining at least half a dozen surrogate nieces and nephews.

“You understand, then,” Draco says, relieved. “It was a complete accident.”

Potter smiles at him, and it has no business making Draco’s heart kick the way it does. “Of course.”

“Good. Well. You’re free to leave whenever.” Draco keeps his voice determinedly level. “The ferry only crosses twice a day so you’ll have to wait for the evening one, or I could lift the apparition wards for a minute— but it might take me a while to unravel the charms, they’re well-established, and you’re probably keen to be gone.. Hell, swimming might actually be your best option, if you want to be off quickly..”

Draco’s aware he’s rambling but can’t stop until Potter makes him.

“It’s December,” he cuts in, and his grin widens, though he makes a decent attempt at hiding it by biting his bottom lip.

Draco feels vaguely frazzled. “And?”

“Even the Mediterranean is sort of chilly in December, Draco.”

And where does he get off calling Draco that, like they’re old friends? Before today, they hadn’t spoken in literal decades. Draco has made and raised an entire person in that time.

“Yes, well.” Draco tugs impatiently at the cuffs of his jumper. “You’ll have to wait, then.”

Potter looks at him, eyes narrowing very slightly behind his glasses. “You want me to go.”

It’s not a question. Draco’s insides do a horrible, squirming cartwheel.

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” he asks.

“No,” Potter looks away with a shrug, his smile flickering into something falser. “I don’t, actually.”

Draco reads more into that than he maybe, sensibly, should.

“But you— I mean, no offence, Potter, but you don’t even _know_ Scorpius. Why would you want to stay for his wedding?”

Potter shrugs, still not looking at him. “I like weddings,” he says. “And I missed this place.”

Draco can’t argue with that. He loves this island so much he bought it, just so no one could ever make him leave.

_Still._ Potter can’t simply crash his son’s wedding because he wants to indulge in a little nostalgia-trip. He’s had twenty years to visit, if he’d really wanted to.

“I like Scorpius, too,” Potter adds. His tone is casual, but Draco gets the distinct impression that he’s being _talked round_ regardless. “He mentioned he wouldn’t mind if I wanted to stick around.”

Draco stares at him. “You like him. From your, what? Five minute interaction during which he sequestered you in the broom shed?”

Potter laughs, head tipped back. “We chatted a bit whilst you were off looking for him. He reminds me of you. He’s very witty.”

Draco forcefully tamps down on whatever his blood pressure is trying to do in response to that thinly-veiled attempt at flattery. “Witty,” he repeats stupidly.

Potter hums a yes. “Very quick. Smart, y’know. You can tell, even from a five minute interaction.” He repeats Draco’s phrasing back to him without remorse, eyes dancing. “Did you educate him here? I’ll admit I was a little surprised when he didn’t show up in my class at Hogwarts.”

“Beauxbatons,” Draco says, with a feeling like he’s rapidly losing the reins of the conversation. “You teach?”

Potter smiles, genuine, big and toothy. “Yeah. Lasted all of six months in the Auror training program, you’ll be vindicated to hear.”

That _would_ be vindicating, if it didn’t also feel like a slap in the face. Potter leaving to go back for Auror training in London had been the whole reason they’d— but that’s not a helpful line of thinking. Draco can’t change the past and wouldn’t besides. If Potter hadn’t left, he wouldn’t have Scorpius.

It explains Potter’s ease in untangling the whole sorry situation, at least, explains why he understood Scorpius’ motivation with very little prompting from Draco. He must be used to it, navigating the drama of young witches and wizards every day. Draco represses a shudder at the thought. He’s had his hands full enough trying not to fuck up _one_ child, he can’t imagine being responsible for whole classrooms full of them and their terrifyingly impressionable minds.

“That’s what I’d be doing,” Potter’s saying. “If I wasn’t here, I mean. I’d just be at school, supervising the kids who stay for the hols.” He says it like it’s something he does a lot, his usual end-of-year routine. It’s wrong, somehow, the idea of Potter staying at work for Christmas, though Draco has no doubt that he loves it, being there for the children who can’t go home. Potter is someone who should have family everywhere, a plethora of people to spend the holidays with, and the ache Draco feels, imagining him alone in his Hogwarts quarters at Christmas, might be illogical, but that doesn't make it any less persuasive.

“I’ll have to put you in the library,” he says carefully, watching Potter’s face for any sign that he’s not serious, that he doesn’t really want to stay. “Scorpius has invited half his damn year group to the wedding and we’ve hardly any room.”

“That’s fine,” Potter says easily. He looks at Draco like he’s going to thank him, then thinks better of it. “Draco,” he says instead, and Draco cannot get used to hearing his name in that voice again. “If you want me gone, I’m gone.”

Draco considers him. “I know,” he says, leaves it at that, then gets up to show Potter to the library.

///

Potter turns out to be the kind of useful houseguest who’s willing to pitch in and help wherever he can, which is, on the one hand, extremely fortunate — all the things Draco still has to do don’t just vanish at the appearance of an old flame, no matter how much it feels like life’s been knocked askew and should rightfully pause until he gets his bearings again — and on the other, markedly surreal, because it means Draco is forced to spend time with him in order to supervise, and going from a twenty year absence of Potter to Potter following him round like an obedient dog waiting to be put to work is more than a little overwhelming.

Pansy’s out through lunch with the florist (Draco has refrained from turning his nose up at the fact that his best friend seems to have slept with a good two-thirds of the Monacan wedding industry, simply because it’s saved him so much money), so he enlists Potter to help him finish clearing the barn where the reception will take place. The ceremony will be up on the cliffs, which, yes, will definitely be cold and squally and no-one will likely be able hear the vows once the sea-wind snatches them away, but Scorpius has certain _ideas_ about how he wants his wedding to go and Draco is helpless to convince him otherwise.

“It’s _romantic,_ he says,” Draco tells Potter, long-suffering, once they’re in the barn, vanishing straw and counting out chairs. “Like hosting your wedding breakfast in the place where we keep the animals for the winter months is _romantic._ I had to move them all to the north barn and the fucking goats hate it, they try for a break-out every other day. Not to mention it’s bloody freezing in here, there are so many warming charms in place I’m surprised the roof hasn’t caved under the pressure, and it took a week to get the smell— what?” He cuts off ranting, because Potter’s laughing at him.

“Nothing,” Potter says with a grin. “Just— _you_ called this place romantic, once.”

Draco feels his face go hot. “I did nothing of the sort.”

“You did.” Potter tilts his head, still smiling. “I remember because it was raining so hard we didn’t bother trying to make it back to the house, and _I_ said it was sort of romantic, getting caught in the rain, and you were all ‘being _dry_ is romantic, Potter’ and pulled me in here.”

His impression of a teenage Draco is annoyingly accurate. “That doesn't count,” Draco says.

Potter only laughs again, then wandlessly sweeps all the lingering pieces of hay up into one bundle so he can vanish them simultaneously in a move so efficient that Draco’s head swims a little. Useful to know the ridiculous magnetic hold Potter has over him has not diminished over the years. Everything he does feels like a pointed attack on Draco’s higher brain function, which is inconvenient given current pressing elaborate organisational circumstances that require Draco’s full attention.

“Besides,” Draco says, making himself look away from Potter’s capable hands to count a stack of chairs for the third time, “it’s one thing to seek shelter here in a moment of necessity. It’s quite another to choose it as a wedding venue.”

They did rather more than _seek shelter,_ if Draco remembers correctly, but he’s not going to bring that up.

Once the tables and chairs are arranged, they move on to stringing lights up amongst the rafters — Scorpius insisted on Muggle-wired ones, went off on a spiel about _unfair labour in the twenty-first century_ and _exploitation of vulnerable magical beings_ when Draco assumed they’d be using fairies. Merlin forbid he conform to even the smallest amount of wizarding tradition, apparently — which takes less time than Draco was hoping for. He’s concerned that they’ll get through the to-do list too soon if they carry on at this pace, and then he might actually have to _talk_ to Potter about non-wedding related topics, or find some other way of keeping him busy. The prospect of leaving him to his own devices makes Draco itch, and it’s more than just a byproduct of the rigorous hosting etiquette that was drilled into him as a child. It feels a step too far, like giving Potter free reign to poke his way around the island is equivalent to letting him prise open Draco’s skeleton and inspect all the fleshy, vulnerable bits underneath.

Which, it is, in a certain sense — never mind that they found this place together, that it was _theirs_ at first, both of them, something they’d shared. Now it’s just Draco’s, the home he’s worked hard to build for himself and his son, and he can’t shake the feeling that an unchaperoned Potter would be able to look at everything he’s done here and really _see_ Draco, better than if he pulled a Scorpius and read Draco’s diary.

Fortuitously, filling and corking a hundred small glass bottles with the home-brewed pear liqueur Scorpius will be gifting to his guests as wedding favours is enough of a finickety, time-consuming task to be sufficiently distracting for another hour or two.

“Pears grow out here?” Potter asks. They’re in the kitchen, a fire in the hearth warming the room. Draco deliberately chose a seat at the other end of the table to avoid any potential under-the-table leg brushing but forgot to factor in that it means he’s directly opposite Potter and can’t help but look at him every time he glances up from his careful decanting.

“No,” Draco says, adding a drop more to the tiny bottle in his hand. “I have a friend in Fontan with an orchard. I just do the fermenting here.”

“Right,” says Potter, mouth twitching. “You’re big into all that, then?”

“All what?”

Potter corks a bottle, sets it safely aside before he waves a vague hand. “You know. Self-sufficiency. The home-brewing. Growing your own veg. That sort of thing.”

“I don’t know if it’s escaped your notice, Potter,” Draco says lightly, “but we’re sort of surrounded by miles of water on all sides. If I wasn’t _self-sufficient_ I’d have to pop back to the mainland every time I wanted so much as a pint of milk.”

Potter doesn’t make a sound, but Draco can read the laughter all over his face anyway. His smile lines are much more defined than they were at eighteen and Draco, embarrassingly, wants to thumb at them, those deep creases on his forehead, the dips in his cheek. “You know how to milk a cow?” he asks. “ _You?_ ”

“Yes,” Draco huffs. He hasn’t needed to for a long time, but he _can._ “Scorpius went vegan six years ago, so I mostly just press oats now.”

That’s apparently too much for Potter, who breaks, unabashed. Draco is only partly successful in controlling his own smile, instinctive, like the corners of Potter’s mouth are connected to his own, tugging at them insistently.

“We still have Brigitte, of course,” Draco adds, just to see Potter’s face crinkle in delight. “Just not for her milk.”

“And Brigitte is?”

“My cow, yes.”

Potter’s shoulders shake when he laughs. Draco wants to _bite_ them, what the fuck.

“Me too,” Potter says, voice warm. “Vegan, I mean. Mostly. Luna— you remember Luna?” (Draco nods, eyebrows arching — twenty years is not long enough to forget the girl who was once locked in his family’s cellar, particularly when she’d been so sweet to him, even in the midst of the aforementioned imprisonment. She still sends him a Christmas card every year.) “Yeah, well, one too many conversations with her about the evils of the dairy industry and baby cows being ripped away from their mothers… it starts to get to you in the end.”

“I’d imagine,” Draco says. “I thought it was a phase Scorpius would grow out of, at first. He’s always been into something or other and he went to school in _France_ , I mean— they practically feed them cheese three meals a day at Beauxbatons, but. He stuck with it. And I was already cooking vegetarian at home, so it wasn’t that much of an adjustment.”

Potter hums, picks up another bottle and resumes the task at hand. “Yeah, it’s not so bad once you’re used to it. Oat milk’s practically the same, I can’t even taste the difference anymore. Better than soy, anyway.” He pulls a face. “Or almond.”

“Quite,” Draco agrees dazedly. The bizarre reality of the moment — him sitting at his kitchen table with Potter and comparing the virtues of various non-dairy milk alternatives, of all things — overwhelms him for a moment, and he turns back to his own pile of bottles with a small head-shake, like he can knock the surreal feeling loose with the movement.

They lapse into companionable silence for a while, which does wonders for Draco’s state of mind, until Potter thumbs a cork home and says, without looking up, “It suits you, you know.”

Draco finishes tying a tiny, perfect bow out of twine around the neck of one bottle. “What does?”

“This. The—” he pauses, and Draco’s eyes find his, curious. “Manual labour?” he tries, chuckling at Draco’s expression. “Or— I just mean. Being here. This way of life. It’s really, erm. Working for you.”

Draco has no clue what to say to that, so he ducks his head in vague acknowledgement and watches the sinking sun outside of the window pick out the few strands of silver hidden in Potter’s dark hair.

///

He makes mushroom bourguignon for dinner because he’s not sure what exactly one is supposed to serve one's childhood-nemesis-turned-summer-romance-turned-person-you’ve-been-trying-to-forget-for-over-half-your-life, and because the recipe calls for a fair amount of good quality red wine which means he can stand at the stovetop and take periodic swigs straight from the bottle in between stirs without feeling _too_ juvenile and ridiculous about it. It’s also — unrelated, obviously — the dish that he usually pulls out when he wants to impress, but neither Pansy nor Scorpius are stupid enough to risk his wrath by pointing that out to his face once they realise what he’s cooking. Potter, of course, is none the wiser. For all he knows, they eat like this every night — elaborate side dishes, the fancy crockery, candles on the table.

Draco _might_ be combatting the lack of precedent by leaning hard into overcompensation.

The dissonance still hasn’t worn off, so it’s strange sitting down to eat with Potter, the anomaly in what would otherwise be a fairly routine evening. Draco has insisted on proper mealtimes ever since Scorpius was old enough to sit at the table unassisted, and it’s not really because of his Pureblood upbringing. He values the time with his son, has done from the very beginning, and all the more once he started sleeping away half the year for school. There’s something about good food, Draco’s learned, shared in the same place every day, that makes it easier to talk.

But Draco’s never had a rogue Potter thrown into the family dinner equation before, so the majority of the meal passes without much conversation. Draco resists the urge to kick Pansy under the table — he can’t get her to shut _up_ most of the time, she could be filling the silence with inane chatter right now if she saw fit — and hopes Potter isn’t feeling the awkwardness of the atmosphere as strongly as he is.

Even Scorpius is distracted, though that’s to be expected with everything he has to do before Saturday. He turns to Draco as they’re finishing the main course and asks whether he’ll be around to meet the caterer tomorrow.

Draco dabs at his mouth with his napkin, shakes his head. “I have to go and meet your grandmother on the mainland.”

“Narcissa’s coming?” Potter asks, and gets three pairs of eyes on him, fast. He sets his cutlery down on his empty plate, clears his throat softly. “Sorry— obviously she is, she just never mentioned—”

“And why would she?” Draco asks. “ _When_ would she? Do you— see her?”

Potter shrugs and nudges his fork in line with his knife. “At Andromeda’s, sometimes.”

Oh, right. Of course. Draco had forgotten that his cousin-once-removed is Potter’s godson. Not that Draco’s particularly close with Teddy, but Andromeda brought him out here to visit a couple of times over the years before her health deteriorated, and he and Scorpius are friendly. Scorpius is still a little annoyed with him for missing the wedding, in fact, but apparently you can’t reschedule your sixth month South American backpacking holiday just because your second cousin decides to get married with very little notice.

On cue, Scorpius makes a huffy little noise at the reminder. “Stupid globetrotting bastard,” he says, fond, spearing the last mushroom on his plate with his fork. (“ _Language,_ ” Draco reminds him, and is generally ignored.) “I told him it was his loss missing the wedding because we were finally going to be cracking into those ancient bottles of champagne in the cellar — y’know, dad, the ones we tried to steal that spring he was here after he turned seventeen — and he was all _whatever, Peru is amazing, Scorp_ and tried to show me pictures of Machu Picchu over the shitty Floo connection.”

Draco had _not_ known about the attempted champagne thievery, actually, but he doesn’t get the chance to comment, because Scorpius waves his fork over at Potter.

“And this whole thing with you was his idea. He thought it was worth a shot, writing to you, after I told him about the diary—”

Confusion knits Potter’s brow and Draco stands up abruptly. “Dessert,” he says loudly, and goes to get the pudding from the pantry before Scorpius can elaborate.

///

Potter finds him after dinner. He excuses himself when Pansy swans off to take a bath, Scorpius disappearing to his room to Floo his fiancé, but he’s back within five minutes. Draco isn’t expecting it, has already pulled on a pair of marigolds to start clearing up and almost drops the — ceramic, _expensive_ — casserole dish onto the stone floor when he turns away from the sink to find Potter leaning against the opposite wall.

Potter lifts an eyebrow at the gloves, but makes no comment. “Thanks for dinner,” he says instead. “You cook a lot?”

Draco nods tightly and sets the dish down, casts a wandless scouring charm to get the worst of the food residue off before he goes at it with the sponge. “We don’t have a house-elf.”

Potter hums. “I noticed.”

He pushes off the wall, walks right up to Draco at the sink. Draco channels all his energy into scrubbing the dish, ignoring the way the movement makes his elbow bump gently against Potter’s, now so close that his gaze on the side of Draco’s face burns, unignorable.

“You’re a good cook,” Potter adds.

“Thank you.” Draco doesn’t know what this _is,_ what Potter’s trying to do here, but at least has his manners to fall unfailingly back on when everything else feels unsure.

Potter’s voice drops by a small degree when he says, “You’re welcome,” and Draco looks up at him, makes a weird, involuntary noise.

“Potter,” he says.

Potter has his arms folded across himself and he taps, just barely, with the back of two fingers, at the section of Draco’s upper arm that’s in reach. “What?”

Hidden beneath the water where Potter can't see, Draco threads his own fingers together and clenches down to ground himself. “This isn’t fair.”

Potter frowns at him. “No?”

“No.”

They stand there for a long moment, mirrored, bodies pointing in opposite directions but faces angled towards each other, before Draco turns back to the dishes. “You left,” he says to the suds.

Potter makes a noise, indecipherable in meaning without his expression as a visual clue. “You were getting married,” he says.

A small detail, in Draco’s opinion. He’d been very upfront with Potter about what was expected of him back then. He knew he’d have to marry and produce an heir, but he’d thought — hoped, wished, _stupidly_ — that Potter might have waited for him.

“And you were starting training,” Draco says. Tone perfectly even, no accusation in his voice.

Potter huffs, an almost-laugh, and Draco flicks a look back at him. He hasn’t moved, his eyes trained unflinchingly onto Draco’s face. “I suppose things worked out about the same for both of us, in that regard.”

“If you mean complete failure, then yes, I suppose so,” Draco says and then he _smiles,_ can’t help it, can’t stop it. Potter seems as taken aback by the grin as Draco himself is and a smile splits his own face wide in response, flashing his teeth.

Draco goes back to his scrubbing before he can do something really, irreversibly stupid.

Without being asked, Potter finds a tea towel from somewhere and starts drying the clean dishes Draco sets in the rack next to the sink to drain. He doesn’t know where anything goes, so Draco has to keep up a steady stream of “middle drawer, on your left,” and “I said _top_ shelf, Potter,” and they could have everything clean and put away in two minutes flat if they cast the right spells but instead Draco just lets Potter mess up his meticulously organised kitchen and they don’t talk about anything else except the correct way to store mugs (Potter’s a big fan of mug trees, apparently; Draco would rather die than have them hanging around, cluttering up counter space like that).

It’s so jarringly domestic that it feels wrong, when they’re done, to go upstairs alone to bed and not bring Potter with him.

Still, he walks Potter to the door of the library like they just went on the world’s most boring first date, and there’s some _leaning_ against the doorframe that he’s not entirely proud of (nor entirely guilty about — sue him).

“The bathroom on this floor’s all yours,” Draco reminds him, lingering. “There are towels in the cupboard off the main landing.”

“Right.” Potter blinks very slowly in the dim light of the hall. “Thanks.”

Draco forces his feet backwards. “Good night, Potter.”

Potter lets him get halfway down the corridor before he says, “Draco.”

Draco turns back at the hips, not trusting himself not to just go all the way back over there if he so much as lets his feet point in Potter’s direction. “Yes?”

Potter’s head is tilted to the side, watching him. “I missed you,” he says, grins. Draco’s lungs stutter. “Good night,” and he disappears into the library, shutting the door softly behind him.

///

Draco wakes up on the eve of his son’s wedding with an about-manageable wine headache and the remnants of a dream that drew far too heavily on actual memories of mid-July 1999 to be too easily dismissed as the usual confused REM-induced nonsense.

Also an impenitent Pansy, sitting on his feet like an overgrown cat.

“Why?” Draco sighs at her, rubbing grit from his eyes. Hoping it’ll dispel the images stubbornly sticking around in his consciousness, clear on the backs of his eyelids when he blinks.

“You don’t want to be late for your mum,” Pansy says, inspecting her nails.

“I set an alarm,” Draco tells her, slaps around blindly for his wand on the bedside table to see why it didn’t go off. He glances at the clock. “Pansy it’s _six in the morning_. The sun isn’t even up. The ferry’s not ‘til _half nine_.”

“I also thought Potter might be in here,” Pansy says with a shrug.

Draco would have something to say to that if he wasn’t still mostly asleep. “We’re too old for this,” he grumbles instead, kicking his feet around under the covers to dislodge her, and she crawls up the bed until she’s under the blankets too, head on Draco’s spare pillow.

“Bullshit we are,” she says, mercifully lowering her voice now they’re only a foot apart. “I want the gossip.”

Draco glares with his one open eye, shoving his face back into the pillow. “There is no gossip.”

“Bull _shit,_ ” Pansy says again.

They’ve been doing this their whole lives, squashed into the same bed, talking things out.

Astoria had not liked it.

“Seriously,” Draco sighs. “I don’t know what you think is happening here.”

“I _think_ what’s happening,” Pansy says, “is that the childhood obsession you never got over showed up for your son’s wedding and you didn’t immediately tell him to fuck off in the opposite direction.”

“I sort of _did_ , actually—”

“And I _think_ that you’ve already made a list a mile long of reasons not to do anything about it, because I _think_ you’re a self-sabotaging bastard who hasn’t thought about what _he_ wants in more than twenty years.”

Draco rolls away from her knowing look. “I couldn’t.”

“I know. Scorp always came first,” says Pansy, then leans over and yawns pointedly in his face. “It’s actually boring how good of a father you are, Draco, and he knows that. But if there were ever a time to be selfish..”

“What, his wedding day?”

Pansy thumps at his arm. “Not the _day of_. I’m not saying steal the show, just— think about it. Let yourself have something.”

Draco turns a squint on her. “And you think Potter’s what I want?”

Pansy rolls her eyes. “You’ve been pining for the man for twenty years.”

“I have not— _pining_ —”

Pansy quiets his sputtering with an unimpressed look.

Draco makes a frustrated noise. “You don’t even _know_ —” he starts.

“No,” says Pansy. “I don’t. Because you only ever told me the bare minimum, and somehow I can _still_ see that your feelings have diminished fuck all in the interim decades.”

_“Feelings_ ,” Draco tells the ceiling, derisive. “This is very stupid.”

Pansy gets out of bed and pats at his cheek on her way out. “We used to do stupid things all the time.”

///

When he eventually pulls himself out of bed and goes downstairs an hour or so later — he doesn’t go back to sleep, head too full, just lies there and tries not to think until the sun drags itself up proper and the room is winter-lit through the thin curtains — Potter has beat him to it, already standing at the stove making breakfast.

Scorpius, too, is up and dressed and immediately starts telling Draco about this modified carbonation charm that Potter apparently uses on the batter to make his pancakes fluff up without the need for eggs and it really is still entirely too early in the morning for lectures on culinary magic, or for Potter to be looking like that, all sleep-soft and at home in Draco’s kitchen, flipping pancakes and charming his son.

“Thank you,” Draco says when Potter slides a plateful in front of him. His attempt to inject a note of annoyance into his tone at Potter out-hosting him in his own home must read equal parts suspicion and a sort of resigned gratitude, because Potter only laughs at him, nudges the jug of syrup forwards and then is back to the pan again, ladling mixture.

Draco pulls the cafetière towards him and pours himself a cup of strong coffee. A _large_ cup. Potter is wearing an _apron._

“I’m coming to the mainland with you,” Scorpius says, with a glance at the watch Draco gave him for his seventeenth.

Draco eyes him. “Don’t you have to be here to meet the caterers?”

“Harry says he can do it and I need to go pick up the pocket-squares— apparently they don’t just _send_ hand-sewn silk pocket-squares by _owl,_ the tailor almost had a fit when I suggested it, something about momme counts and the detrimental effects of ocean air—”

“Harry?” Draco mouths dazedly at his son, eyebrows up, and gets an inchoate wave of one hand in return. How Potter, over the course of one breakfast, has been promoted from accidental invitee to someone who is both on first name terms with the groom and can apparently be trusted to oversee key wedding responsibilities, alone, Draco has no idea.

“Anyway, I blame you,” says Scorpius. “All these posh, uptight friends you have..”

“ _Pansy’s_ friends,” Draco corrects, cutting neatly into his food. “And friends who are supplementing half the cost of this wedding, don’t forget. I don’t know why you’re surprised. Your taste is even more expensive than mine, you know there are certain— attitudes that come with that lifestyle.”

Scorpius grins. “Yeah, and I blame you for _that_ , too. It’s completely your fault I’ve been raised with such high standards.”

“And I won’t apologise for it,” Draco says airily once he’s swallowed his bite (mouth-watering, obviously, but Draco’s not going to admit it outside of his own head). “You’re welcome for the excellent taste.”

Scorpius laughs and drains the remnants of tea from his mug. It’s true — Draco’s not sorry for working hard to make sure his son has never wanted for anything, especially as, somehow, Scorpius turned out remarkably level-headed and sensible regardless. He’s never been entitled, never had a horrible, sneering phase like Draco did, not even when he was an over-emotional teenager. No one could call him spoiled, and it’s something that surprises and impresses Draco every day, his son’s humility, his generosity despite his more than comfortable upbringing.

..Even when he’s threatening to call off the wedding if they can’t get the specific, custom-made vegan leather brogues he wants imported from Mexico.

He is still Draco’s son, after all. You can take the boy out of the ancestral Manor and all that.

“Ok,” Draco says with a small head shake, focusing. “So, Potter will be here—” ( _he’s_ not calling Potter by his first name, never has and isn’t going to start now) “—and we will go and collect your grandmother and the pocket-squares, which will probably take most of the day — mother’ll want to shop, I’m assuming, lunch somewhere at the very least, and the ferry back isn’t until later this afternoon, we might as well hang around in the city... though it’s going to be a nightmare, this close to Christmas..”

Scorpius nods along as he trails off.

Draco fixes him with a look. “Potter knows what he’s doing with the caterers?”

There’s a laugh from the stove. “I’m right here, Draco,” Potter says.

Draco chooses to ignore the continued, maddening use of his first name. “And do you know what you’re doing?”

Potter has finished filling his own plate and he turns off the gas, brings his breakfast over to the table. He chooses the seat right next to Draco’s and Draco has to tense every muscle in his lower body to stop himself shifting his chair away in a too-obvious move to put some distance between them.

“Yes,” says Potter. “Scorpius filled me in. They’re just setting up today, right?”

Draco hmms a yes. “They’ll be back tomorrow morning to actually start prep.”

“What’s Pansy doing?” Scorpius asks, forcing Draco’s eyes to snap away from the distracting sight of Potter’s jaw working as he chews. His son’s face is open with amusement. Draco squints at him in warning.

“God knows,” he says after a beat, once he’s satisfied that Scorpius isn’t going to embarrass him. “Having her nails done, maybe? Or she mentioned something about a seaweed wrap and a full body massage.” He exhales heavily through his nose. “You’d think it was _her_ getting married.”

“Yeah, shouldn’t I be the one getting pampered?” Scorpius asks with a little laugh.

“Wouldn’t say no myself, honestly,” says Potter, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck, fork in the other as he eats.

“Is the bed uncomfortable?” Draco asks, watching as Potter manipulates the top notches of his spine with his fingers. Draco’d transfigured the Chesterfield in the library himself, had thought he’d done a good job of it, but even the most expertly conjured mattress can’t compare to the real thing.

Potter looks over at him. “What? Nah, it’s fine. Just getting old, is all.”

Draco raises an eyebrow. “Careful. I’m older than you are.”

“Yeah, by a month,” Potter grins.

Draco bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself smiling back. “Closer to two, actually.”

Potter waves a hand. “Semantics. Point is—” he sets down his cutlery so he can stretch both his arms back over his head with a quiet groan, “we’re not as young as we used to be.”

“Indeed,” Draco agrees, unsure if the minor head rush that’s suddenly overtaken him is due to Potter’s easy use of the word _we_ — like there’s an _us,_ a him-and-Draco — or the way the long sleeves of Potter’s t-shirt pull over his triceps as he stretches.

Across the table, Scorpius’ smirk is getting less subtle by the second.

“Go and get your coat,” Draco tells him with a jab of his fork, like he’s nine again. “We can’t be late.”

He rolls his eyes but pushes back from the table and deposits his mug in the sink before he leaves. Draco experiences instant, split-second-too-late regret; now it’s just him and Potter, shoulder to shoulder.

“Thanks for this,” he says into the quiet, more stiffly than he means to.

Potter’s shoulders go up and he smiles again, smaller, eyes back on his plate. “It’s no problem. Someone has to be here to show them where to set up, and it’s not like I have other plans.”

“Still.” Draco wishes he hadn’t finished his meal so quickly so that he had something to do with his hands. One half of his brain is making a good case for occupying them by digging into the base of Potter’s neck where his own fingers have left off, kneading out the tension there. It’s distinctly unfair that he should be forced to be alone in a room with Potter when the words _full body massage_ have been uttered in the past five minutes.

Potter does his little shrug again, his stupid, broad shoulders hitching, and Draco has to get up and turn quickly away, go to the sink.

“What are your plans?” he asks, rinsing his coffee mug. “After the wedding I mean.”

Tomorrow’s the 23rd, so Scorpius’ll be off on his honeymoon until the new year, leaving Draco alone for the holiday. Draco assumes — and is going to _enforce_ , strongly; he doesn’t want hordes of hungover twenty-somethings clogging up his island longer than necessary — that the guests will be leaving as soon as they’re able on Christmas Eve, eager to get back to their families, but he has no idea what Potter intends to do.

He can’t _stay_ , obviously. That would be—

“I guess it depends,” Potter says. Draco, still turned away, can feel Potter’s eyes on his back.

“On?” he asks the base of the sink.

Potter doesn’t answer for so long that Draco gives up staring at the plughole and turns around.

“I think you know,” Potter says lightly, looking away so he can stand and collect his plate.

Draco folds his arms across himself. It’s the best he can do, defence-wise. “Do I?”

Potter hums, advances towards him, and here they are again: the kitchen sink, far too close, an echo of last night. Potter doesn’t ask him to move, just slips an arm around him so he can put his plate in the sink and it sort of— brackets Draco in, makes him want to twist away, to twist _into_ it, push them closer. He makes a soft, strangled noise and Potter steps back to a marginally safer distance. Still far too close for Draco to be able to think clearly.

Scorpius coughs from the doorway. “Um. Ready to go?”

///

“So Potter is there now?” Narcissa asks, sipping her champagne delicately. “In your home? Unsupervised?”

She’d insisted on the roof terrace for lunch like Draco had known she would, even in December. The heating charms at the _Hermitage_ are, thankfully, on par with the rest of the service: impeccable.

He snorts at her. “ _Unsupervised._ What do you think he’s going to do? Burn the place down?”

His mother’s gaze has not lost its piercing quality with age. Draco feels fifteen and transparent again every time she turns it on him. “Of course not,” she says, sensible. “I’m merely surprised at your willingness to relinquish that responsibility. You barely let _me_ house-sit.”

“That’s because he doesn’t need you to,” Scorpius says, grinning around his mouthful of honey-glazed fig. “He never goes anywhere.”

“I go places,” Draco huffs. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Scorpius laughs at him, tips his own glass back. A waiter appears to refresh it before he even gets it all the way back down onto the table.

Narcissa pats at Draco’s hand with that particular combination of kindness and condescension that only she has perfected. “I know you do, darling. I only meant — you’re very protective of your space.”

She pauses, makes a tiny, contemplative sound. “Though, really, I shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve always made exceptions for Potter.”

Draco gives her a startled look. “Have I?”

“Yes,” she says, spearing a sliver of fennel out of her salad and inspecting it.

Draco sits with that information for a long moment. “Wait. Does that mean you—?”

“Knew who you were with, that whole summer? Obviously, Draco.” She doesn’t quite tut at him, but the intention is there. “You were not a subtle teenager.”

“I wasn’t trying to be _subtle_ , I was just—”

“Hmm, and that’s why you used to make Potter hide in the other room every time I Floo’d to check that you were still alive?”

Draco wants to flush like a child caught in a lie, only stops the response through sheer willpower.

“I love this,” Scorpius says across from them, sighing in what appears to be deep contentment. “I don’t even care that all your drama is upstaging my wedding.”

Draco rolls his eyes. His son takes the kind of gleeful, vindictive pleasure in hearing about the blunders of his past that Draco suspects everyone secretly does when confronted with the reality that their parents were once young, too, and fallible. _He_ certainly remembers badgering grandma Druella (may she rest in— relative peace; she’d been a temperamentally attentive grandmother) for any misspent-childhood stories of his mother’s.

“Eat your fucking figs,” Draco sighs, chest swelling with warmth in spite of himself as he watches Narcissa and Scorpius share identical, faux-scandalised looks.

“Language,” Scorpius says primly, and sticks his tongue out.

///

Mother wants to apparate all the way over to Avignon for the market, so they make the necessary jump and Draco quickly finds a stall selling overpriced, seasonally-spiced drinks with a small seating area attached where he can magnanimously offer to _wait with the bags_ , in reality simply keen for a bit of space as Narcissa drags Scorpius off and into the crowd with an arm linked through his. He buys a mulled something for warmth more than anything else and sits, hands cupped around the enamel mug, and thinks about Potter.

Potter, who, forward as he’s ever been, is not keeping his intentions to insinuate himself back into Draco’s life particularly close to his chest.

Draco doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel. He knows that he had, probably, been in love with Potter at some point. He wouldn’t have admitted it then — _couldn’t_ have, because he didn’t _know_ — but it’s painfully obvious now, with the years of hindsight.

And that’s— it’s fine, Draco can accept it. He’s not so stubbornly against a little self-awareness that he’s willing to lie to himself about feelings from decades ago. He’d loved Potter, sure, ok, but he’d also been nineteen and stupid and naïve. It doesn’t mean he still does _now_ , because that would be clinically insane. He doesn’t really know anything about the Potter of today. Was it even possible to love someone you didn’t know?

Though, if he’s honest, it feels like he _does_ , like he hasn’t lost that knowledge, that ability to read Potter, that it’s just been sitting, dormant, in the back of his mind, the depths of his body, waiting to be put to use again. Like flying — instinctual. He hasn’t walked the path from the Great Hall to the Slytherin Common Room in more than twenty years, either, but he’s sure he could still do that without conscious thought. Some things are ingrained into him, sense-memory, and apparently loving Potter is one of them.

Which is— highly inconvenient. And an unsubstantiated conclusion, besides. Just because maybe he does still know Potter — the way he works, all those little behaviours and movements and habits that make up who he is — it doesn’t necessarily equate to loving him. Except Draco’s starting to think they might be the same thing: knowing, loving.

The daylight is already fading by the time they’re ready to head home and a freezing rain is falling, chopping into the waves so that the ferry ride back is not smooth. Draco’s used to it after all these years but Narcissa has to spend the whole journey up on the deck, face turned into the wind to combat the nausea. It’s only because Draco stays to keep her company that he sees the suspiciously too-bright lights of the island before they’re more than halfway there.

He rethinks his dismissive response to his mother’s comments about leaving Potter unsupervised as they step off the boat — he’s obviously not been idle, left here alone all day. There are lights strung through the juniper trees all along the path from the pier up the cliffs to the house, where they criss-cross over the courtyard, climbing up the walls and framing the windows. It’s never quite cold enough for snow here, but Potter has conjured something white and convincingly fluffy that sits on the roof and windowsills and the lip of the balcony off of Draco’s bedroom, unmelting even in the mist of the relentless rain.

Potter himself appears around the side of the house just as they’re approaching the front door. He stops when he spots them, shakes rain out of his hair and grins wide. Draco wants to fuck him so badly his jaw aches, which is a realisation he’d rather not have occurred to him with his mother and son standing feet away.

Narcissa’s patience with the weather is wearing thin, however, so she only pauses long enough to greet Potter and then sweeps inside to get out of the rain, leaving Draco and Scorpius standing, staring between Potter and the display above their heads.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Potter says with a diffident smile. He rakes a self-conscious hand through still-damp hair and then shoves it back into the pocket of his coat. “I figured you wouldn’t prioritise decorating here because of the wedding, but I thought I’d better get out of the caterers’ way so I had some time and— it seemed a shame, just to leave all this bare for Christmas..” he trails off, squinting at Draco’s face when he makes no response.

After a too-long beat, Scorpius huffs a noise that’s the verbal equivalent of a heavy eye-roll and claps Draco on the shoulder, jolting him out of his dazed stare. “It’s great! Right, dad?”

“Hm? Yes,” Draco agrees vaguely, eyes locked on Potter’s face. “Right.”

Scorpius sighs in amusement and strides past them both to join his grandmother inside, the sound of the door banging closed behind him echoing across the courtyard. Potter has acquired a wreath from somewhere and attached it to the wood — it swings for a moment in the momentum.

“It’s ok?” Potter says into the ensuing quiet. “I didn’t want to step on any toes.”

“No, it’s—” says Draco, swallowing. “It’s beautiful, actually, I just wasn’t expecting— you didn’t have to..”

Potter waves the words away. “It’s fine. I don’t do well with being bored.”

Draco remembers. He’d been the focus of that unwavering, restless energy more than once back then. The memory makes him flush, jaw twinging, and he hopes Potter blames it on the cold.

“I left inside alone,” Potter adds with a small smile, flicking at a silver bell hanging from a branch overhead until it makes a tinkling noise. “I thought that might be a step too far.”

“We’d normally have a tree and everything up by now,” Draco says. “Scorpius usually insists as soon as we hit December but I just hadn’t got around to cutting one, with all the wedding prep.”

Potter eyes him. “You cut it yourself?”

“With my axe,” Draco says.

“Your axe. Right. You have an axe.”

Draco turns away from the heat in Potter’s gaze. “Shall we?” he asks with a jerk of his head, and walks inside before Potter can answer, knowing he’ll follow.

  
  


///

They end up on the balcony after dinner, when everyone else has retired to their respective rooms. It feels like an inevitability. Draco grabs a bottle of brandy from the pantry and they sit just outside the french doors off of the bedroom, arms-length apart, passing it back and forth in the freezing air and drinking straight from the neck like schoolkids, the burn of it better than the blankets Draco drags from his bed for keeping the cold at bay. The night is clear, the sky dark and huge and just for them. The island’s always had that last-people-left effect — it’s the thing Draco fell in love with at the very beginning, when an escape from his life back in England was all he wanted.

It’s that, the feeling that they’re alone here at the edge of the world, or maybe the brandy, loosening his tongue, that has Draco confessing more than he means to about the wedding tomorrow. Or just Potter, even, maybe, and the way he listens.

“I think I’m,” Draco sighs, fragmentary, hating how tongue-tied he still gets around Potter, like with one look Potter reaches inside of him and pulls out an unsure, thirteen-year-old Draco by the wrist. “I just don’t want him to make the same mistake I did.”

“It’s different,” says Potter, his reassurance immediate and decisive. “You’re not forcing him to get married.”

Draco snorts. “I couldn’t if I wanted to. He’s more stubborn than even I was, if you can imagine.”

Potter laughs low. “I’m starting to get that idea, yeah.”

“I’m just worried,” Draco admits, voice shrinking. He clears his throat and makes himself talk like the adult he is, not the unsteady teenager Potter makes him feel. “I think he’s in love with the fairytale of it all.”

“Well,” Potter says, not unfairly. “He’s twenty-one.”

Draco has nothing to say to that. By twenty-one he’d already been long disillusioned with any such romantic notions, alone on an island with an almost two-year old, a perpetually run-down villa and a lifetime’s worth of painful memories.

And a Potter-shaped hole in his chest. If he were to, you know, let the brandy go to his head and be dramatic about it.

“Does it matter, that he’s caught up in the romance of it?” Potter asks. “If he’s in love? _Is_ he in love, d’you think?”

Draco nods. He’s sure of that, at least as far as he knows what that kind of love looks like. He sees it every day on Scorpius’ face. He wouldn’t be letting this wedding happen if he wasn’t convinced of it.

Potter spreads a hand like, _well, there you go_. Draco takes the opportunity to slap the brandy bottle into it and Potter grins in thanks, unscrews the top that Draco had replaced perfunctorily and tosses it somewhere, takes a long pull before continuing. “So he’ll be fine, even if he’s young. It happens for some people that early, I guess.”

Draco gives a non-committal hum and determinedly catches and quashes the thought trying to push its way to the forefront of his mind: that it had happened for him that early, too, and it hadn’t lasted, hadn’t _mattered_ , not when he’d already been promised to someone else. He steals the bottle back from Potter and drinks, watches Potter through half-shut eyes as the sweetness coats his tongue.

“Mine wasn’t like this,” he says when he’s swallowed, gesturing out over the festooned courtyard with the bottle in one hand. “My wedding, I mean. It was very small. At the Manor, with just our parents and the officiant.”

“Back home?” Potter asks. When he takes the bottle from Draco their fingers brush, and Draco’s skin throbs, beats with the pulse of not having been touched like he’s wanted (wants, present tense, still _wants_ , who is he trying to fool here) for so long. “I didn’t know you got married in England. I would’ve—”

“What?” Draco laughs at him. “Come along?”

Potter screws up his face, concedes with his own laugh. “Yeah, probably not. I just always assumed you stayed here.”

“I wanted to,” says Draco. “That was one of the reasons it was never going to work. I wanted to be back here as soon as I left, and she couldn’t stand the place.”

“So how—?” Potter starts to ask, then stops. Draco knows what he’s thinking: the other, obvious reason his marriage didn’t work, and how on earth they’d managed to make Scorpius in spite of it. He’s probably too— something, polite? uncomfortable? — to ask it outright.

Draco gives him a wry smile. “I think the longest Astoria and I managed to be in the same room was to conceive Scorpius.”

There’s a horrible pity in Potter’s eyes that makes Draco shove at his shoulder. “Don’t give me that look. It wasn’t so bad.”

Potter still looks unconvinced. Draco laughs at him again. “Really. Astoria’s not one to just lie back and think of England, if that goes any way to explaining why it was bearable.”

Potter _blushes_ , Draco sees it, subtle as it is on his skin. “But you’re still—?” he asks, leaving another half-sentence hanging in the air for Draco to finish.

“Yes,” Draco says easily, takes the bottle gently back out of Potter’s grip by the neck and sips before continuing. “Sometimes gay men sleep with women, Potter. For the sake of their families,” he adds, unable to resist parroting word for word what his father had said to him when Draco, eighteen and shaking violently, had tried to explain why he couldn’t marry the girl they’d chosen for him. It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth and he drinks more brandy to clear it.

“Yeah,” Potter says, like he understands in more than a theoretical sense, and Draco frowns at him.

“Are _you—_?”

“No idea,” Potter answers with a shrug. Then laughs, once, the sound echoing out into the darkness. “Is that stupid? I’m past forty.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” Draco says, careful.

“I mean— I’ve had relationships,” Potter goes on unprompted. “And other, less serious, ah— how would you put it? Romantic entanglements,” (Draco swats hard at his bicep for that and he _giggles_ , which is sexier than it has any right to be) “with men and women, but. I don’t know. Not for a while, I guess.”

There’s a part of Draco that’s pleased to hear it, and another, adjacent part that’s sick and jealous over the fact that anyone’s been allowed Potter like that at all, when Draco’s been stuck here alone all these years.

“It’s funny, actually,” Potter says, eyes out on the sea, just visible in the distance where the moonlight reflects off the surface. “All the kids— at school, I mean, all my students. They’re much savvier about it than we were. They have all these labels, and this club, and— don’t get me wrong, I love it, I love that they feel so confident in who they are but it’s also— I don’t know. Weird, I suppose. A bit like how I look at them sometimes and know that they have no idea what the war was like, and I’m _glad_ of that, obviously, I’m so happy they’ll never have to know — what was it all for, otherwise? — but it’s still strange. D’you know what I mean?”

Draco does maybe, a little. He’s never around children — never really around anyone at all on a day to day basis — but he thinks he understands anyway. It must be weird for Potter, being surrounded by all that naive joy after everything he went through at their age. Not _bad_ , like he said, not painful, but odd. Similar to how Draco sometimes feels envious of Scorpius and how he got to spend his adolescence. Draco himself had gone from a war-ruined teenager to a father in a matter of months. He never really had a chance for that kind of innocence.

Potter seems to take his silence as agreement, because he lets his head loll back on his neck, gaze rolling from the sea to the stars by way of Draco’s face. Draco’s skin prickles. Like he’s a worthy enough view to sit between the beauty of the landscape below and the sky above.

“So— yeah. What was I saying?” Potter says with a small frown, rambly and beautiful enough to steal Draco’s breath right out of his chest. “I’ve never really defined it one way or the other. The kids at school know I’ve been with men because of this incident with Zach in a supply closet that I will, apparently, never live down, and I think that’s important for them, to know they have a Professor like them, who understands them—”

“ _Smith?_ ” Draco cuts in, mouth falling and staying open a little, appalled.

Potter grabs the bottle back and swigs with a wince. “He’s an invigilator now, he was there examining my NEWT students.” When Draco says nothing, just continues to stare at him like he’s admitted to an affair with the giant squid and not one of their former classmates, he waves a dismissive hand. “I blame Horace. He was having one of his parties, there were _criminal_ levels of Firewhiskey involved—”

“ _Slughorn_ ’s still there?” Draco asks, amazed.

“He only _just_ had his hundredth,” Potter says, like that justifies it. “His apprentice does most of his teaching for him, anyway. I mean— she’s not even an apprentice anymore, she’s been the acting head of the department for ten years, but I don’t think anyone has the heart to actually kick him out—”

“Christ,” Draco swears with a little head shake. “Zacharias Smith, Potter? Really?”

“He was never bad looking,” Potter says, but he also tilts his head like, _yeah, I know._

“He was an insufferable _twat_.”

“ _You_ were an insufferable twat,” Potter says, eyebrows up.

“ _I_ had class,” Draco huffs. “And cheekbones.”

Potter laughs at him, and they seep into comfortable silence for a while, passing the rapidly emptying bottle back and forth. Draco keeps accidentally-on-purpose nudging their fingers together on the hand-over. Potter keeps letting him.

“They have badges, too, y’know, the kids,” Potter says after a moment, with a small smile. “For their pride club. I always thought you’d have liked that.”

“Badges are an under-appreciated art form,” Draco sniffs, and snatches the bottle back one last time to drain the dregs, the warm sound of Potter’s laughter sinking down alongside the alcohol to sit, smouldering, in his stomach.

///

The day of the wedding passes more smoothly than Draco could have hoped for. He gently kicks Potter off of his balcony before the hour gets too late, claiming he needs a good night of sleep, and then ruins it by sitting up alone for another hour, staring into the biting night air and thinking, but the indulgence is justified the next morning when it means he wakes up with a head clear enough to focus, able to put aside the personal contemplations he allowed himself last night to focus on his son.

Scorpius is suitably giddy all morning, the weather clear and freezing, the dampness of the rain having frozen into a frost overnight, one that barely thaws by midday, preserving everything in glittering stillness and the ceremony, when the time comes, is beautiful, the couple so radiant in the dying afternoon light of a deep heliotrope sunset that Draco forgets all about the temperature. The island seems determined to be at its best and Draco’s almost too overcome with pride at watching his son to spare any emotion for the setting, but a small part of him still glows with appreciation at his island, his home, rising so spectacularly to the occasion.

There are speeches, of course, and food, once the guests have traipsed, thickening the air with their laughter and congratulations, over to the barn. Draco gets through his toast without tearing up once, though it’s a close call when he makes the mistake of meeting his son’s eye and sees the unabashed joy shining there, the love and the wonder. Potter’s sitting at a table a little ways away, a seemingly permanent smile playing at his mouth. Draco determinedly does not look at him the whole time he’s talking, not trusting his voice, but he’s aware, unwaveringly, of his presence, a spot of burning, magnetic heat in a room already warm with conversation and well-wishes.

All in all, the time slips by swiftly. The days always feel shorter to Draco in winter, when the sunlight is fleeting, but he’s surprised how soon he finds himself sitting at the edge of the room, watching the guests dance to increasingly raucous songs (no, he will not get used to the things people let pass as music these days, no matter Scorpius’ attempts to convince him of their melodic merit), the hour creeping closer and closer to the time when he’ll have to wave his son off with a degree of permanence that’s making Draco feel unacceptably morose. He will not allow himself to mope until he’s alone in bed, at the very least.

He’d initiated the dancing, as was custom, taking his turn with both Scorpius and his fiancé — _spouse_ , Draco corrects himself, good _God_ , it hasn’t really sunk in that he’s old enough to have a _married son_ — and spinning his mother around for a song or two, letting Pansy commandeer him after that, but he’d excused himself as soon as he’d fulfilled his duties. He’s never loved dancing, the memories of it too entangled with the strict lessons he’d been forced to take as a child, his father unrelentingly disappointed in his technique, and he prefers to watch from his spot on the sidelines, nursing a glass of champagne.

Potter, as is becoming habit, finds him. He has two plates of wedding cake in one hand and a glass of his own in the other, forks tucked into where his fingers wrap around the stem. Draco accepts the cake and his company without comment, eyes still on the crowd.

“This is incredible, by the way,” Potter says after a moment, speaking around a mouthful of cake. “Molly’ll kill me, but I might have to get the address of your bakery. I think I need them to bake every one of my birthday cakes until I die.”

Draco snorts a little at him, spearing his own neat mouthful. “I made it.”

Potter chokes. “Shut up. You did not.”

It makes Draco laugh, loud and outright at the look on Potter’s face. He shrugs, demure. “I made all of Scorpius’ birthday cakes, when he was growing up. I wanted to do this for him, too.”

Potter’s face softens unbearably. “Draco,” he says.

Draco fidgets a little. “I sent it off to be iced, obviously, who has the time to be faffing about with fondant and the like, but I made the base. It felt right.”

There’s a pause, Potter looking at him with something in his eyes that Draco can’t decipher, isn’t trying to, and then Potter sits back a bit, goes back to his plate. “Well,” he says. “It certainly _tastes_ right. The offer definitely still stands.”

Draco ignores the implications of that — of him being around to bake Potter a cake for his birthday every year — and laughs, softer this time. “I suppose it’s a reasonable undertaking. You might not have that many left.”

Potter laughs back, delighted. “Oi,” he says, with a soft elbow in Draco’s side. “You were the one who said we weren’t that old.”

“Maybe I spoke too soon. Watching your child get married sort of puts a perspective on things.”

Potter hums, acquiescing. “Yeah, I can see how that would do it. Just think — before long, you could be a grandfather,” and then he dissolves into laughter again at the look of abject horror on Draco’s face.

///

After — after the newlyweds have been seen off, after the guests have been shepherded into their accommodation, some, closer members of the wedding party, back to the house, some to the tents that have been set up along the east beach (Pansy proves useful at herding them in the right direction — she has a way with twenty-somethings, probably because she thinks she still is one), after the caterers have moved in to start clearing up — after all that, Draco sits in the empty kitchen with Potter and drinks tea. It’s long past midnight and the house is silent, all of its occupants collapsed readily into unconsciousness after the day’s festivities.

Draco considers what he’d be doing if Potter had never showed up in his shed two days ago. Probably this, maybe with more of an air of melancholy, likely with whisky instead of tea, something stronger to quiet his thoughts, but this nonetheless, and he allows himself to be grateful that Potter’s there, if only to stave off the strange sense of loss he feels now the wedding is over.

Potter, to his credit, seems aware of the delicate atmosphere and doesn’t try to break the silence. He just stays, within reach, and lets the quiet sit around them.

Outside it starts raining, feather-light against the windows.

Draco keeps hearing Pansy in his head, asking him what’s stopping him, telling him that sometimes the stupid thing is the right thing. When his mug is empty, Potter takes it from him, fills the sink and starts washing the things from lunch that Draco hadn’t had a chance to clear before he’d needed to get ready. He keeps doing that, helping, doing without Draco having to even ask.

It doesn’t take him long and then he’s turning, sighing, the sound so gentle it less breaks the silence than dissolves it.

He looks at Draco. “Dance with me,” he says, holding out a soapy hand. “C’mon. You hardly danced all night.”

Draco sighs. “I danced with my mother. I danced with Pansy.”

“Yeah,” Potter says, like that proves his point, hand still outstretched.

Draco takes it, still damp and warm from the water, and lets Potter pull him up out of his chair. It’s not really dancing at all, the way they sway back and forth, which might go some way to explaining why Draco feels no discomfort, only an enveloping peace and a burgeoning warmth. Potter tucks his chin over Draco’s shoulder, has to raise up on his toes the tiniest amount to do it and Draco’s glad he can’t see the smile that takes over his face at the sight of it, the feeling of Potter pressed against his front, into his neck.

When he pulls back, Potter looks steadily into his face.

“Potter,” Draco says, helpless.

“Draco,” says Potter back, unblinking.

When their mouths meet it feels like someone’s slamming open every door and window in Draco’s body, one after the other, letting the light and the clean air pour in. They’d done that back at the Manor when he was a child — or, the elves had, under his mother’s supervision — shutting off whole wings of the house for the darker months and then opening them up with the arrival of the warmer weather in March, when the entertainment season would start again. That’s what it feels like, kissing Potter again: like spring.

Potter isn’t gentle and Draco doesn't want him to be, any fragility he feels melting away in response to Potter’s strength rather than breaking under it, Potter pushing vitality and conviction into him with his mouth, his hands on Draco’s jaw, the momentum of his kiss as he herds Draco backwards slightly, taking. It gives Draco the fortitude to push back, to take what he, too, wants.

“Potter,” he tries to say against Potter’s lips, but it gets lost, buried between inhale and exhale, tucked into the non-space between their mouths. Draco tries again, then once more, as much to blame for their inability to break apart as Potter is, but eventually he collects his thoughts enough to bite down on Potter’s bottom lip, making him open his mouth on a gasp that Draco uses to separate them.

“Potter,” he breathes, finally, eyes falling closed.

Potter hums, burying his nose against Draco’s throat so that the sound vibrates against the skin there. It is not conducive to clarity of thought.

“What?” he asks. “Are you about to start telling me why this is a bad idea?”

Draco lets out a breath. “It is.”

Potter detaches himself and steps back, away. Every cell of Draco’s body rallies, hates him for being the reason a distance has appeared, tells him to go over there and close it again.

“Ok,” Potter says, even. He doesn’t stop until he hits the sink, back to the ceramic, watching Draco with an unbroken, steady gaze. Draco knows he’s being given room to think, to explain, and he both appreciates and despises it — not Potter, never Potter, even when they were children, it was never hate, not really — but himself, for ruining the moment, for needing to look before he leaps.

Potter says, “Lay it on me,” and Draco doesn't know where to start.

“I—”

The rain’s picked up a little outside. Draco feels callow in the face of Potter’s quiet maturity, his willingness to weather whatever protests he somehow knows Draco has. It’s like the decades span between them, Potter over there with the years of experience etched onto his face, the lines of his hands, Draco here, stuck, left behind.

“It feels wrong,” is what comes out of Draco’s mouth. “Or, no—” he adds, hurried, at Potter’s repressed flinch. “It doesn’t— it feels right, but it feels wrong.. that it feels right?”

Potter looks at him, face open, emotions flitting visibly across it: vulnerability, amusement. “It feels wrong that it feels right,” he repeats slowly.

Draco makes a miserable little noise, frustrated that he’s fucking this up before anything’s even really happened. “I don’t know. It feels too— like it can’t just be that easy, you know?”

“No,” Potter counters immediately. “I don’t. I don’t really get what the problem is. We’re both unattached. Your son’s married and leaving home and doesn’t hate me besides, so it can’t be that. We know we work together— or, we did, once. And I don’t think we’ve lost that. What’s the conflict here?”

“It’s embarrassing,” Draco says, too loud in the quiet room.

Potter stares at him, confused but not unkind.

“I just,” Draco stops, takes a breath. “There isn’t really a _problem_. There’s no _reason_ not to do this, I’m just—”

Potter pushes off the counter, comes closer again like he can’t stand the distance any more than Draco can, though he’s cautious, like he’s afraid he’ll spook Draco. Draco would resent being treated like a startled animal if he wasn’t feeling so completely untethered.

“Just what?” Potter asks gently.

Draco folds his arms across himself protectively. “I’ve just _been_ here, all these years.”

When the ensuing silence stretches on, Potter prompts him carefully. “Ok, and?”

Draco throws up a hand. “ _And_ , you— I don’t know, you’ve been off living your life. Not that— I’m not saying I resent that or that I’ve been sitting here waiting for you to come back for twenty years because that’s— it’s ridiculous and not _true_ , I’ve been living, too, I have a home and a son, and I really wasn’t just— wasting away here, _pining_ , or whatever Pansy said, but—”

Potter’s eyebrows are all the way up at this sudden, unexpected outpouring. Draco feels scattered, uncontained, full of a weird, unstable energy.

He makes himself take a moment, feels the slate floor solid under his feet and breathes in and out, feels every one of his forty-plus years heavy in his spine, his knuckles. “I just,” he says, again, eyes closed, finding it easier to articulate himself when he can’t see Potter’s face, “I don’t know what you want, and I feel like I’m coming at this from a completely different place to you. I haven’t— done any of it. There was us and then there was my marriage and then there was just— me, and Scorpius, and that’s all I’ve had since.”

There’s a seconds pause before Potter gives a little exhale of comprehension and bridges the last of the gap between them with two strides. Draco’s eyes fly open as warm hands reach for him.

“It feels uneven to you,” Potter says quietly, almost to himself, not a question, his arms snaking around Draco’s waist and drawing him in. Draco, all his defences spent, lets him. “You— Draco, you think I’ve thought of anyone else? You think I wasn’t comparing everyone, every single one of them, all these years, to you?”

Draco makes a tiny noise that Potter must interpret as disbelief because he presses on, voice loose and light with relief and understanding and something breathy, verging on exasperation. “You say you haven’t been waiting all these years, but I _have_ , and I don’t care if you think that’s embarrassing or too much or— juvenile, or insane. I don’t care that you haven’t been with anyone. I’m _glad_. I already had to give you up for someone else once, and I can’t do it again. Even the thought—”

“Potter—” Draco starts to say, overwhelmed, but Potter shushes him, soft, his fingers digging into Draco’s side for a moment before relaxing.

“No, don’t,” he says. “Let me. You thought I’d be, what? Freaked out if you let yourself fall back into this too easily? Draco,” and he won’t stop saying Draco’s _name_ like that, and Draco’s insides are in freefall, “Draco, look at me. I love you. I’ve loved you the whole time.”

Draco’s whole body shudders, involuntary. “Potter,” he croaks, apparently all he can say.

“No,” Potter says again. “I know. It’s— sorry.”

“For what?”

“For not coming back sooner,” Potter says, tilts Draco’s head down, kisses him. “For wasting all that time.”

His kiss is both new and familiar, like returning to somewhere you went as a child, knowing and discovering all at once, observations inlaid on top of memory. Potter still curls his tongue the same way he did at eighteen, is still incapable of remaining static, his hands still preoccupied with mapping out whatever part of Draco is in reach, but he moves like a man now, the weight of him unyielding when Draco tests it, leans into it. Draco has barely kissed anyone since his wife, and the few times he did — fleeting, insignificant occasions — he knows, now, can admit, that he was looking for this, trying to get back to _this_ , Potter in his arms.

Potter corrals him until he falls back into his chair, then climbs on after him, situates himself in Draco’s lap, and they’re definitely too old for this, kissing like teenagers, but Draco would rather break the damn chair than stop. 

Potter does, though, after another long minute — stops to catch his breath. He doesn’t go far, just takes up his position against Draco’s shoulder again, dampening the fabric of Draco’s dress shirt with his heavy breathing, both their robes discarded hours before. Draco’s panting too, more affected than he thinks is probably proper, given their age and the fact they’ve barely done enough to scandalise a first year, but it’s been a very long time, and he has a lap full of Potter. Surely some slack has to be granted.

The problem with not having Potter’s tongue in his mouth, however, is that the power of rational thought starts to creep back in, and with it the worries, the questions. They still haven’t really discussed— and Potter has a job back in England, Draco can’t just ask him to— and does he even want anything more than just tonight, it’s been mere days since they reunited—

“I know what your brain’s doing,” Potter murmurs into Draco’s shoulder, nipping tenderly at the muscle there, the sharp, sweet sensation snapping Draco out of the beginnings of his spiral.

“And what’s that?” he asks. Potter reads him so easily, even after all these years, _knows_ him so well, and the fact of it pulses in Draco’s veins: _knowing, loving, knowing, loving_.

“Rationalising,” Potter says. “Catastrophising. You think this is too soon because it’s only been a couple of days.”

“It _has_.”

Potter snorts, a tiny huff of air that hits Draco’s collarbone. “And the rest.”

“But,” Draco starts, tightening his arms around Potter to offset his next words, to soften the concerns he needs to voice before he can let himself submit to this, fully, “we didn’t talk _once,_ all that time. You had no idea what I was like.”

“And now I do.”

Draco sits back a little, encourages Potter up too until he can see his face better. His expression is set, stubborn. “You’ve grown up,” he says, resolute, “but you haven’t changed. Not in the ways that matter.”

Draco’s doubt must show on his own face because Potter’s eyes flick upwards for a second and he sighs, shakes his head with a smile, then adjusts his position, locking his hands behind Draco’s neck and leaning back to meet his eye, head on. “Draco. Did I not embarrass myself enough earlier? We might have changed, but the way I feel hasn’t. I’ve been stupid about you since we were sixteen. Earlier, even, in one way or another.”

Draco’s nose burns dangerously at the sentiment, but he also can’t contain a laugh at the phrasing. Potter quirks an eyebrow. “What?”

“Nothing. You just sounded like Pansy. She reminded me we used to do stupid things all the time.”

“Smart woman,” Potter grins.

“Or stupid woman, as it were,” Draco says, and this time he’s the one to lean in and initiate the kiss. Potter hums happily into it, letting Draco lead for a moment before he detaches, mouthing from the corner of Draco’s mouth down to his ear by way of tiny, biting kisses along his jaw.

“I think you should take me upstairs,” he breathes there, voice low, and Draco stands up so abruptly that the chair scrapes along the floor with a horrible noise. Potter laughs his stupidly attractive little giggle again as Draco all but drags him out into the hall by the arm.

“Still on board, then?” he asks at the base of the stairs, laughter in his voice even as he drops it to a near-whisper. “Not having second thoughts?”

Draco wasn’t, but if Potter’s brought it up, maybe _he_ — “Are _you_ having—?” he starts but Potter simply fixes him with a look.

“No,” he says, climbing backwards a step or two so that he can press a kiss to the top of Draco’s head. “I was teasing, mostly.”

Draco is unreasonably affected by the barely-there touch. “Ok.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he adds, speaking into Draco’s hair. The position presses Draco’s own face into Potter’s chest and he hides there, inhaling, memorising.

“Ok,” he says again. “Good.”

Potter chuckles and Draco feels the rumble of it in his chest. He pulls back. “What?”

Potter shrugs, a quiet smile on his face. He kisses Draco again before he answers, apparently enjoying the temporary upper hand their positioning grants him. “I just can’t believe you left me to _marry and have a baby with someone else_ and I’m the one who has to keep reassuring _you_.”

“Shut up,” Draco says into his mouth, pushing at his shoulders with both hands. “Let’s stop talking.”

Potter complies — Draco makes it difficult for him not to, occupies his mouth fully, swallows any sounds as he guides him backwards up the stairs. They have to tiptoe past the room where his mother is sleeping — like Draco needs another reason to make this all feel teenaged, young and reckless — but then they’re down the corridor and safe behind the closed door of his room and Potter sort of throws him on the bed, topples down after him and reminds Draco that neither of them are, in fact, the picture of youth and vivacity they once were.

He lets out an _oof,_ lips against Potter’s nose where he miscalculated what Draco’s sure was supposed to be a sweeping gesture — literally — but Potter only laughs and starts taking his clothes off.

He turns his attention on Draco once he’s down to his underwear, raising an eyebrow when his careless toss of Draco’s shirt to the floor gets no comment. “Oh, it’s fine,” Draco says, distracted from the expectant look in Potter’s eye by his thighs, bare and bracketing Draco on the bed, the fur of hair on his exposed chest. “It’s usually a mess anyway. I shoved a lot of my shit into the wardrobe right before I invited you up here last night.”

Potter barks a laugh, head tipped back. “God,” he says, smile so wide Draco can see his back teeth, “I love you.”

Which makes Draco’s insides start doing their zero-gravity act again.

“You don’t have to say it,” Potter adds, leaning down to skim his nose over Draco’s chest, his hands on the button of Draco’s trousers, making quick work of it. “I just want you to know.”

“I know,” Draco says, lifting his hips to help, hearing that beat again in his ears: _knowing, loving_. “I know. I love you.”

Potter tucks his smile into Draco’s ribs so it’s invisible, his forehead against the thud of Draco’s heart, but Draco feels the shape of it, and he _knows_.

And he knows _Potter_ , and what he likes, so he flips them with little effort, until Potter’s underneath him, blinking, his pupils wide and dark.

“God,” Potter says again, and his voice cracks a tiny amount. The sound makes Draco’s skin burn. “Clearly you’re the one who should be doing the throwing around.”

Draco snorts. “I don’t think either of us are up for much throwing around.”

“I don’t know, I reckon you could have me up against a wall, if you wanted.”

Draco’s vision zones out, picturing, and Potter laughs at him. He bites at Potter’s ear in admonishment. “I’m not eighteen anymore.”

“Could’ve fooled me with that little flipping stunt,” Potter says, thumbing at his bicep. “ _How_ have you still got a body like this?”

Draco is too old to preen, but he won’t pretend it’s not a gratifying compliment. “The island doesn’t run itself,” he says archly.

Potter grunts a little. “Fuck, why is that hot? That should not be so hot.”

Draco grins at him. “What? The fact that I run the place? I’m very hands on, remember? I _farm_. I build things.” He holds Potter still with a strong grip on his jaw, speaks into his mouth, cannot for the life of him stop smiling like a besotted idiot. “I do all my own tiling.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Potter says — pants, really, hot breath in Draco’s mouth. “Do you own a drill?”

Draco laughs, bright and loud. “I have _three_.”

Potter bites his way into Draco’s mouth with a hungry noise, sucks on his tongue like they really are eighteen again, eager and sloppy and without agenda.

“Would you like me to demonstrate just how adept I am at _drilling_?” Draco asks when his mouth is free again and Potter laughs, breathless, and presses his lips up, once, hard, onto Draco’s. “Shut up,” he repeats. “I’m too old for bad innuendos.”

“It’s not _bad innuendo_ ,” Draco scolds, playing up the offence. “It’s very seductive—”

Potter cuts him off with his whole face again, gets a grip on the short hairs at the back of Draco’s head and smushes them together, sucking Draco’s bottom lip into his mouth and nibbling at it, tonguing at the flesh until it’s swollen.

“You don’t need to seduce me,” he says when he’s finished chewing on Draco’s lip like an animal. “I’m already here. I’ve only wanted to be _here,_ since I stepped off the damn boat.”

“Well, why have we wasted three days, then?” Draco asks, like it isn’t completely his fault, and Potter laughs, kisses at the wrinkle between his eyebrows, and then at his mouth again, can’t stay away, keeps trying to get impossibly closer, shove his tongue down Draco’s throat. If Draco fucking asphyxiates, well— there are worse ways to go. He’s had a good run.

“What do you want?” Draco asks, lifting back and smoothing Potter’s hair out of his face. Potter goes a little melty at the gesture, nuzzling into it.

“Want you inside me,” he says, catches Draco’s hand and holds it cupped against his cheek, presses a sweet kiss to the palm.

It’s not like Draco has been— unaware, so far, of how their bodies are pressed together, leaving no room for doubt as to where this is going, but Potter’s words still hit him like a blow to the back of the neck, cracking at the top of his spine and sending heat spilling down it. He shivers, thumbs at Potter’s mouth.

“And I want you to call me Harry,” Potter adds, lips parted against Draco’s thumb, his breath hot and damp.

“Harry,” Draco says on his next exhale, a little broken, like the effect is immediate, like he’s been compelled, and Potter— _Harry_ — sinks his teeth carefully into the pad of Draco’s thumb in reward.

It’s been a long time, but Draco hasn’t forgotten this part — doesn’t think he could have, even if he’d tried — the way Harry opens up so beautifully for him, under him, around him. Now that he’s said it, he can’t stop, speaking Harry’s name into his mouth, hiding it behind his teeth, spelling it over and over with his tongue across any skin he can reach, the curve of a pectoral, the crease of his knee, the side of his face when he turns his head, eyes screwed in pleasure as Draco unravels him into a string of livewire nerves.

“Draco,” he gasps, when Draco has him stretched around three fingers, “now. I’m ready.”

Still, Draco lingers. He’s missed the potent rush of this, the singularity of being the person who gets to do this to Harry.

But Harry’s impatient, and his eyes are persuasive.

“Ok,” he soothes when Harry squirms his hips down, stroking his hair back again. “I’ve got you, hold on.”

Harry lets out all his breath when Draco pushes in too slow, grips at his sides to urge him faster. Draco stills, fully seated, brain flooded with liquid heat.

“ _Draco,_ ” Harry says again, pleads, the syllables splintering Draco’s name in two. “C’mere. And _move_.”

Draco laughs without breath, pulling out and hitching Harry’s legs around his waist so he can get to his mouth on the next push in. “Were you always this bossy?” he asks into the kiss.

“Don’t know,” Potter says, mouth slack under Draco’s. “Probably not. I know what I want, now.”

And what he wants, apparently, is to be able to kiss Draco whilst Draco pushes into him again and again. Their mouths lose coordination as Draco’s rhythm builds, but Draco doesn’t care, would happily spend the rest of his life here in this lazy tangle, sharing breath more than actually kissing, his open mouth catching the bridge of Harry’s nose, his chin, the bow of his top lip.

That might be a too optimistic a view of his stamina though, because Draco’s old now, yes, older, and stronger, but this is Harry, and it was never going to last long once he started breathing like that. Draco can feel himself skimming along the edge already, and he needs to—

“Harry,” he says. “Harry.”

Harry hums his answer, eyes finding Draco's, his body rocked back into the mattress with every thrust of Draco’s hips.

“You’re the only one,” Draco says, voicing what he’d implied before, the naked truth of it bleeding into the warm space between them. “There hasn’t ever been anyone else.”

Harry looks like he might cry. How embarrassing for him. Draco bends him near in half for another kiss, ignores that his own eyes are far from dry, and lets himself just— not think. Forget about everything that’s not Harry’s mouth, their hands linked together, pressed into the bed, the sound of his breath, the feel of him tight and hot and mind-numbing around Draco.

Harry whines, “Draco,” sweet and desperate, and “I’ve got you,” Draco says again, promises, “Harry, I have you, c’mon,” and he frees a hand to wrap it around Harry’s cock, pumping his wrist in time with his hips as best he can, pleasure searing his brain of anything but instinct.

Harry groans a little, mouth lax. “Missed you,” he says, eyes sinking closes, body tightening. “Go— _d_ , I missed you. Love you.”

“I know,” says Draco. “I know, me too,” and Harry comes all over his hand, all over his own stomach. Draco shudders at the pressure, watching as Harry’s muscles sing with tension before going loose and lazy, his eyelids fluttering.

He takes a moment to come back to himself, then tugs at Draco with insistent hands, coaxing him down for another kiss.

“Shall I—?” Draco starts, cut off by Harry’s tongue.

“No,” Harry breathes. “Stay.”

Draco takes it for the invitation it is and starts moving again, chasing that edge. It’s not a long chase, not with Harry’s blunt fingernails running up his sides like that. Draco comes with the skin of Harry’s throat sucked between his teeth, his tongue worrying the flesh there as Harry holds him through it.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Harry says, later, when he’s cleaned them both up and they’re under the covers, watching the rain throw itself against the french doors. “I’d forgotten.”

Draco hides a yawn in the pillow. “Did you get me a present?”

Harry lifts his head from Draco’s chest to show off his raised eyebrows. “Did _you_ get me a present?”

“I didn’t know you were coming!”

“And I didn’t know if you were going to kick me off your island.”

“So it _is_ my island, then,” Draco says, fingers on the small of Harry’s back. “Glad to see you’ve come around.”

Harry makes a grumbling noise but flops back down onto Draco’s chest. “I got Scorpius something. Off the registry, obviously.”

“Of course. I can’t stand when people buy off-list.”

Harry snorts. “I figured.”

Draco scratches at the base of his spine so that he wriggles closer. “Anyway, I don’t mind. I don’t even like gifts that much.”

At that, Harry laughs so hard it makes Draco’s rib’s shake, jostled by the movement. “Liar.”

“Yeah,” Draco admits easily, on a sigh, “but I think you can make it up to me.”

///

He wakes a few hours later, just as daylight is starting to illuminate the room. The rain has stopped, and the sun picks out the droplets on the windowglass, the light catching and refracting. Draco leaves Harry asleep in his bed, pulls on some clothes and pads down to the sitting room to start a fire. Scorpius promised to Floo this morning, just to check in and confirm that they’d reached their honeymoon destination safely.

“How exactly are you sunburned already?” Draco asks, long-suffering, when his son’s head appears in the fireplace, the bright red of his nose and cheeks vibrant amongst the green flames.

“Merry Christmas to you, too,” Scorpius huffs, grinning. “And we’re five hours ahead! We’ve been out on the beach all morning!”

“It’s not Christmas ‘til tomorrow, and I know you know how to perform a sun-protection charm, because I taught you myself—”

“Oh, leave off, dad, I’m not twelve—”

They bicker back and forth good-naturedly for a few minutes, debriefing on the wedding and the Portkey and the state of the honeymoon suite at the hotel before Scorpius narrows his eyes slightly and says, far too off-hand to not be suspicious, “What about you? Good night?”

Draco shrugs. “Uneventful.”

Scorpius grins, eyebrows up. “So that’s not the shirt Harry was wearing yesterday?”

Draco looks down at himself in alarm. He’d just grabbed whatever clothes he could find on his way downstairs— but, no, this is definitely _his_ —

Scorpius dissolves into peals of laughter. Draco glares at him. “This is _my_ shirt, as I know you’re perfectly aware.”

“Oh, I know,” Scorpius says, toothy with amusement, “I just thought I’d— and you walked right into it—” he breaks off again and Draco pinches the bridge of his nose, praying for patience.

“Oh god,” Scorpius sighs when he’s regained the power of speech, overjoyed at Draco’s discomfort, “do I have to start calling him dad?”

“Shut up,” Draco points a warning finger at him. “Shut your mouth. I will withdraw my blessing.”

“Too late,” Scorpius sings, eyes dancing, flames reflected in them. _Merlin_ , he is much too much like Draco, the little shit.

“I will drag you through this fireplace,” Draco threatens, but Scorpius just cackles.

“Harry’s fine,” Harry comments idly from the doorway, and Draco whips around, face hot, wondering how long he’s been standing there. _He’s_ wearing Draco’s clothes, which is rather incontrovertible confirmation of what Scorpius had suspected.

“Harry it is,” Scorpius laughs, then sobers, his face going mock-stern. “Do I need to give you the ‘don’t break my dad’s heart’ speech?”

Harry huffs in faux-exasperation. “Why does everyone think it’s _me_ who’s going to be doing the heart-breaking here? Historically—”

“And that’s enough out of you,” Draco says, attempting to quiet Harry with a look, and, when that doesn't work, lobbing a floor pillow at him. Harry catches it easily, laughing.

“Ok, message received,” he says, retreating. “I’ll go put the kettle on, shall I?”

“Don’t let grandmother see you walking around like—” Scorpius calls after him, a beat too late, as they hear a clear, damningly unsurprised “Mister Potter,” from the hall, and Harry’s stumbled attempts at an “Ah— good morning, Narcissa, how did you sleep?”

Draco covers his eyes with one hand. He had, admittedly, sort of forgotten they weren’t the only people in the house.

Scorpius sniggers. “Ok, I should go, I’ve got my head in a beach bonfire. Thanks for that, dad, I really needed the laugh.” Draco scowls at him, but he only grins. “I’ll see you when we’re back. Love you.”

“Love you,” Draco says, “Be safe.”

Scorpius rolls his eyes, blows Draco a kiss and then disappears. Draco just has time to get to his feet before his head pops back again for a second and he says: “Oh, and I’d get those bridesmaids staying in my bedroom out as soon as you can. They were making eyes at Harry all night.”

///

Because Draco is an infallible host, he makes breakfast for the remaining house-guests before throwing them unceremoniously off his island. Harry actually does most of the cooking, moving about Draco’s kitchen in Draco’s clothes and bumping their hips together whenever they’re side-by-side at the stove, which probably does more to disencourage the over-eager bridesmaids than Draco’s death-glares do. Harry’s radiating an obvious contentment that both embarrasses Draco and fills him with a syrupy, fierce smugness. It gets him several pointed looks from his mother, which he refuses to acknowledge.

Pansy makes an appearance halfway through breakfast, wrapped in her morning robe, yawning hugely and putting away three mugs of spearmint tea before she can even look at the food.

“Overindulged, did we?” Draco asks her when she comes to slump against him at the counter, sniffing at the stack of toast he’s buttering.

“Not as much as you, apparently,” she says, nodding over at Potter, who’s humming to himself as he hands out full plates.

Draco narrows his eyes, ignoring the flush he knows is painting his face, and shoves a slice of toast directly into Pansy’s open, triumphant mouth to shut her up.

To his relief, the food facilitates the speedy vacation of his home that he was hoping for, the guests all flocking to the pier by midday, ready to leave. Draco nods at the ferryman — the same one as ever, now grey with age, but still smiling and weather-honed as the day they met — grateful that there’s always an extra crossing scheduled for holidays.

Back at the house, his mother, to his surprise, appears downstairs with her bags just before noon, accepting the arm Pansy offers her.

“I thought you were staying,” Draco says.

“As did I,” says his mother. “But I thought maybe my sister would appreciate my company a day or two early.”

“Which means she doesn’t want to spend Christmas as a third-wheel,” Pansy comments in a stage-whisper, and Draco glowers at her, very glad that Harry’s upstairs in Draco’s en-suite, and thus not present for this conversation.

“You’re sure?” he asks, pulling his mother to him. He’s had to look down at her since he was sixteen, and the angle is familiar, the strong upwards tilt of her chin comforting.

“Of course, darling,” she says with a smile. “Have a lovely Christmas. I’ll Floo sometime tomorrow.”

Draco pulls her into a brief hug, pressing his gratitude into it. “You too.”

“Give Potter my regards. Perhaps you’ll even let him stay in the room for the call, this time,” she adds as Draco steps back. Pansy snorts with laughter, kissing at Draco’s cheek.

“Oh, go on, both of you,” Draco shoos, smiling in spite of himself, “get out.”

Pansy laughs all the way down the corridor and out the front door.

“Everyone gone?” Harry asks, when Draco climbs into the shower with him minutes later.

He hums a yes, pressing himself along Harry’s wet back under the stream of the hot water. His skin smells like the tea-tree of Draco’s shampoo. “Mother said to tell you goodbye.”

“Nice of her,” Harry says, laughter in his voice. “Maybe don’t mention your mum when we’re naked, though.”

Draco pulls a face into the back of Harry’s neck, nips a little sucking kiss there.

“Plan?” Harry asks, turning.

Draco shrugs. “I’ll have to go and take the tents down at some point, clear the barn. Other than that—” he lifts his shoulders again. Harry’s hands go to them, smoothing over the muscle.

“The barn, eh?”

Draco rolls his eyes. “Don’t get any ideas.”

“Well, we _are_ forecast rain,” Harry says, nodding at where the window is propped open to let the steam out.

“Being _dry_ is romantic, Potter, don’t forget,” Draco says, smiling, into his mouth. He still can’t quite believe he has this back, has Potter here to kiss whenever he feels like it.

Harry laughs, tilts his head demonstratively back into the water pouring down on them. Draco kisses where his jaw meets his ear. There’ll be time to discuss things later, what they’re going to do when the school holidays end, Harry’s job, but for now, he’s blissfully not thinking about any of that.

“Wash my hair?” he asks, and Harry nods, smiles, soft and fond.

“Love you,” he says, keeps saying, like he’s trying to gather all the lost time back up, and “Love you,” Draco says right back, readily handing it to him. 

**Author's Note:**

> [i'm on tumblr](https://forestgreenlesbian.tumblr.com/), if you want to say hello xxxx


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